


STAR TURN

by alachat



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Post-Time Skip, but none more so than hoshiumi, hinata is in love with everyone, same hinata same
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:54:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26269075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alachat/pseuds/alachat
Summary: "I just want a tattoo like yours," Shouyou says, stepping closer."Do you want to be me that much?" Hoshiumi jests, still catching light.HoshiHina Week 2020 - Day 3: Flowers and Tattoos
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Hoshiumi Kourai
Comments: 10
Kudos: 67





	STAR TURN

**Author's Note:**

> (cw: sexual content, love, excessive figures of speech)

_star turn (n): the most outstanding performance, the most sensational person._

_\---_

Hoshiumi Kourai has a pair of wings on his left inner thigh. 

As long as Shouyou's hand span, it looks at home on his skin like a birthmark. The thick lines wrap his hip adductors in a firm embrace. The curves, in flight, violent against the rippling of muscles, carry power the way Hoshiumi carries himself when airborne. The black ink gleams underneath the sheen of sweat and the haze in his head, hot and intoxicating. Drenched in sunlight it's a work of art, made to be revered, to be worshipped. 

Shouyou's new hobby is to make its feathers flutter with every caress of his hands. 

His breath. 

His lips. 

His teeth. 

\---

Hinata Shouyou fell in love at first sight.

At the age of 10, Shouyou fell in love with a black-clad figure soaring in an arena lit bright, a human fighting in a world of giants, an exception trampling fate and expectations under his feet as he took to the sky and burned himself into the back of Shouyou's mind. On a bike in front of the electronics shop with a baseball bat in his hand and the world out of his head, he saw dreams take shape and immediately sold his soul to volleyball for a chance to fly. 

Three years and three months later, he was captured by an angry face, a pair of cold eyes, and infuriating words that left him permanently scarred but forever more tenacious. "What have you been doing the last three years?" Kageyama Tobio asked, his hand clutching the net like a lifeline. The question tore Shouyou limb from limb, each and every word sinking its teeth into his naïveté and shredding it to pieces. "If you want to win, then get better," Kageyama said in lieu of a farewell. Shouyou used those words to stitch himself back together, unaware that they would, like Kageyama and his shadow, his habits, his love, remain with him until the end of time.

The next summer, Kozume Kenma stunned him. He was just a lost boy at first, with bleached hair but grown-out roots and an indifference to many things in life, from formality to volleyball to the whispers behind their backs. 

Then he smiled, and Shouyou shivered. 

"My team is rather good," Kenma said, pretty eyes almost glowing like a cat's hidden in the dark, waiting for his nemesis. In his voice there was nothing but honesty unembellished, because he wasn't afraid, nor prideful, nor modest. He was Kenma, lost and timid until he wasn't, eyes on a phone and on the ground and barely on anyone else but his team. So Shouyou wanted those eyes to be on him, for as long as possible. 

In the spring, Shouyou watched a boy not much taller than him, an exception, turning into a star for the first time. Hoshiumi Kourai sprang up from the ground higher than Shouyou, higher than anybody, higher than gravity permitted. He spiked and blocked and received and served and left Shouyou aching for air for volleyball for someone who shone so vividly so strikingly that he believed he could shine too. That he, another exception, could also stand on the court. Could also be. 

Yearning consumed Shouyou. Without a second thought he rushed down the stands through the adoring crowd in order to see clearer, to be nearer. And when he came within earshot of Hoshiumi after the match, all he saw was light woven in the shape of a human, blinding.

With a voice loud enough to reach heavens, Hoshiumi clutched victory in his hand, set his sights on the world, and made a declaration that cut off the chains binding Shouyou’s wings and put a different kind of shackles on his heart: “Being short is a disadvantage, not a sign of incompetence.”

\---

"Why wings?" Shouyou asks, lips not moving from trembling feathers.

"Why now?” Hoshiumi chuckles. The shaky, winded syllables do devastating things to Shouyou. They get him drunk on power, but also remind him that it's Hoshiumi who holds the leash, who allows him to fly close to fire, who can burn the wax off his wings but choose not to. Not yet. 

"It just occurred to me," he replies, raising Hoshiumi's leg a little higher so he can leave a mark of gratitude right under the black ink. Hoshiumi sucks in a shallow breath, and pale skin blooms red under Shouyou's teeth. The sight whispers questions he has no answer to, and for a second he thinks he knows what it's like, to be a king dreamt up, who lets reason shatter at the feet of his own creation. 

"Please tell me," Shouyou pleads with his mouth and hands. Hoshiumi writhes on top of the blue sheet, a visage cling-wrapped in sunlight and euphoria. His hand pulls at Shouyou's scalp; his groans leave scratches and scores on Shouyou's already tattered mind. In response, Shouyou pins Hoshiumi’s hips down and muffles his own moans in the damp salted skin.

"It's for victory," Hoshiumi says between gasps. Shouyou digs his fingers into Hoshiumi's Adonis belt. In the hollow of his chest, a monster stomps its feed and shakes his ribcage. Its roar joins the monster's inside Hoshiumi, forming a deafening harmony.

"And ecstasy," Hoshiumi inhales, all of his vowels pressed out of shape. Yet there's an unmistakable smirk in his voice, and it drains everything inside Shouyou. His throat becomes parched, his stomach painfully empty. He wants nothing more than to bleed the ink out of Hoshiumi's skin and carves himself there instead with his claws and teeth. 

But he can't, so he makes do with dragging his tongue up Hoshiumi's thighs, up and up and up, until the world caves in and there's nothing but Hoshiumi in his mouth, his ears, his eyes, his head.

\---

Hinata Shouyou fell in love at second sight. And third sight. And fourth sight.

In his third year of high school, Yachi blossomed. She grew her hair long and trim off her worry. She wore confidence along with the Karasuno jacket so well that his eyes unconsciously followed her to where she stood in the gym, charming beyond words. And when she held a hair tie between her teeth and raised her arms to bundle her hair into a ponytail, showing the curves of her breasts underneath the white T-shirt and exposing her nape at the same time, his heart skipped several beats then decided to sprint in compensation. But he was going to Rio, so he contented himself with the way she beamed when she greeted him every morning for the rest of his high school life.

In Rio, Shouyou learnt that if you got out of your bedroom and biked to the beach to play volleyball on the worst day of your life, god would come and cheer you up in the form of Oikawa Tooru, who would make bedroom eyes at you while asking you out for dinner. His Japanese was fresh water in the desert; his ambition poured gasoline on the fire in Shouyou. During dinner, and lunches and more dinners and late night drinks along the waterline, they talked of the past, present, and future. They played beach volleyball, and Shouyou fell head over heals for Oikawa's tousled hair and chiselled jaw line, for the way he tumbled into the sand face-first again and again only to rise as god, for his powerful back when he turned away and walked towards his destiny, leaving behind a declaration of war. 

A year later, Shouyou reunited with Miya Atsumu on the same side of the court and got drenched in the unbridled love he wore proudly on his sleeves. He loved so intensely that sometimes things went haywire, like when he made half of the second-string hitters cry actual tears and curse him with enough venom to kill a buffalo, or when he went back to his hometown on a red-eye flight for the second anniversary of his brother’s restaurant right after a tournament and proceeded to pass out for the next 3 days. But, despite its calamitous tendencies, his love still drew Shouyou in. Up-close, Atsumu was funny, in an utterly charmless and sufficiently endearing way. He was beautiful too, especially when he squatted down for a set that showed off both his ingenuity and his glorious leg muscles, and Shouyou's eyes travelled freely from the eye-catching quadriceps to the magnificent soleus whenever he could. 

In his debut match as MSBY starter, there was everyone. There was Kageyama, who had been waiting for Shouyou ever since he was an elementary kid. His eyes were no longer cold and his face no longer angry, but his words remained in the seams of Shouyou's volleyball, double-stitched and everlasting. There was Ushijima, with a Greek god physique and a strength that knew no confines, who boiled Shouyou's blood with his overpowering spikes and kept it shimmering just by being on the court. There was Bokuto too, an ace to the core, and Romero, world-class underneath handsome smiles, and Sakusa, dark eyes and dark hair, wielding his blessing like a weapon and his beauty like a curse. There was everyone; the court was hot; the crowd was loud; the ball ricocheted off his arms. Shouyou swayed to the excitement, the exhilaration. He thought this match would never end, and youth would last forever. 

And there was Hoshiumi, who had also been waiting. Like 6 years ago, he loudly approached Shouyou with an unmatched competitiveness. Unlike 6 years ago, he had grown out of his hairstyling products and into himself, as strapping and attractive as the best of them. And when he turned into a star once more, higher than anyone, higher than ever before, higher than where humans dreamt, Shouyou could only stare. At how regal he looked, king of the sky. At how his taut body curved in mid-air. At how he sprang back and spiked the ball right where Shouyou's arm would have been had Shouyou not underestimated him. At how he wore pride on his face when he looked down at giants much taller than him and thew away the keys to the shackles around Shouyou's heart.

\---

Hoshiumi is burning so so hot. 

Shouyou can only feel the dizzying heat that encloses him. Their entangled bodies speak rhymes that sound like incantations, and Shouyou lets his mind chant along. He grabs the metal bars of the headboard with his right hand to stay as steady as he could.

Underneath him, Hoshiumi is biting his lips. For someone as vocal as him, this is an act of provocation. A sort of resistance put up to ruffle Shouyou's feathers, to stroke the bristles of the monster in his chest. It yanks a low, guttural sound out of his throat, like it always does. 

With red in his eyes, Shouyou leans down to pry Hoshiumi's mouth open with his teeth and tongue. It’s not hard, since Hoshiumi can barely hold onto this side of pleasure, his fingers spreading bruises on Shouyou’s arms. But it’s not easy either, because it’s Hoshiumi, who was born to defy. Limits, gravity, logic, god, he breaks them all with his bare hands and feet on his way to the top of the world, even when their shards scar him blood red and sorrow blue.

And he shows Shouyou how do it too.

Because Hoshiumi was born to defy, Shouyou delights in bending him to his will, in making him surrender, even if Shouyou has to beg on his hands and knees. He lifts Hoshiumi’s leg to his waist, and with every slam he draws out hisses and moans and obscenities and his name and god's name, all strung up together like pearls on a silk thread, exquisite and iridescent. 

With a loud gasp, Hoshiumi wraps his arms around Shouyou's neck and pulls him close. Shouyou makes a pearl string of his own on the soft shell of Hoshiumi's ear and trails kisses from his temple to his cheek, his jawline, the crook of his neck, the dip between his collarbones. He tastes like the sea, whose waves are waiting. 

They stay like that for a while, for an eternity, flesh against flesh using friction as words and shaping faith from sweet nothing. Hoshiumi burns like hot plasma; every caress every kiss leaves Shouyou scorched. But he doesn't let go, can't, since when you are high on love and lust and all the elusive, you get so hungry that you fear no heights; you turn reckless to the point of wreckage. So he hangs on, until the threads snap and the pearls scatter all over the sheet, until the wax melts and they both crash out of the sky.

\---

Shouyou let love engulf him twice.

The first time, his body was a wreck. The three sets against Inarizaki left him beyond exhausted; adrenaline had run its course and eloped with the rest of his strength. His muscles whined. He had trouble differentiating between gold and grey. Bees were buzzing in his ears. 

Yet his mind was running a mile a minute. It kept replaying over and over again the moment Ojiro Aran's spike struck his forearms. He could still feel the brutal force that came straight at him, the burn it left behind, how it knocked him over. And—when the ball flew up in a perfect arc, defanged, ready for Karasuno to launch their attack—how the arena, the world, the future, erupted in light. 

He didn’t know its name yet, the feeling his first successful receive in an official match injected into his veins. But he knew what it could do. It could move mountains and dam up oceans. It could build stairways to heaven and highways to hell. It could make him run to the edge of the world and dive off the cliff out of his own volition, braving the depths beneath in exchange for a place in an arena where the court would be hot, the crowd would be loud, and the ball would once again, and again, and again, ricochet off his arms.

\---

"Why me?" Hoshiumi asks. He's lying on his back, his eyes chasing an invisible shadow on the off-white ceiling. The afternoon sun paints swathes of light on his bare skin, its strokes gentle on the sharp lines and lingering on the curve of his neck, making him glow softly. Shouyou forgets to breathe. 

The sun loves Hoshiumi so much it makes a masterpiece out of him, and Shouyou, who has the sun in his name and hair and blood, can only think, "why not you?"

"Why now?" he says instead. The timing is a bit curious, given they have just spent a beautiful Saturday indoors having sex. He shifts back and leans against the headboard. A clock ticks on the bedside table, counting seconds and words unsaid. His hand makes its way to Hoshiumi's hair and stays there, fingers making shy acquaintances with the light-coloured strands.

"Today seems to be a good day to question life choices," Hoshiumi grins. He reaches for the blue veins on Shouyou's wrist. His touch is light like a feather, like a good night kiss, like the flutter of the eyelashes. Enough to ruin a kingdom. Enough to bring Shouyou to his knees. 

Shouyou thinks back to their first meeting, which lasted a grand total of 5 minutes and felt like history, brutal and self-confirming in the same breath. 

Their second meeting, which lasted an hour and a half and ended in an exchange of vows, the stands their witnesses. "I'll be waiting," Hoshiumi said; feverish and tear-stained, Shouyou bowed. 

Their third meeting: glances across the arena in the Spring High the year after, separated by brackets. "See you later," Hoshiumi made himself heard, not knowing later meant half a decade. In Rio, Shouyou hung those words up in his daydreams like the North Star.

And their fourth meeting, two exceptions against each other against time against the world. Has that meeting ended? Is it still going on, even here, in Hoshiumi's apartment in Tokyo, where their bodies touching and merging on the blue sheet warmed by sunlight, among the dumbbells, the volleyballs, the shelves filled with health and ornithology books, the fuchsia lampshades, the blooming cacti?

"Because you're the same as me," Shouyou tries to describe the light, but a sparkle is all he can grasp.

Hoshiumi laughs, as boisterous as only he can, "What are you, a narcissist?" 

Shouyou catches the laugh with his mouth. It echoes in his lungs. 

"If I'm one, then so are you."

\---

The second time, he was drowning in a sea of stars. 

It was late August, and Shouyou was about to go back to Rio. He was very very excited; this Rio was going to be different than the Rio he left last year, where he once stared at Kageyama and Ushijima on the big screen while on his bike delivering takeaways to strangers. This Rio was going to be linoleum floors and ceilings as high as the sky, not sand and sun and capricious winds that change the trajectory of his serves on a whim, not heartbreaks and longings locked away in a drawer opposite his bed and right above his chest.

He was also a little bit melancholic. It was a side effect of a life split between two continents: elation always slightly dented over group chats and Zoom videos. 

So when Hoshiumi told him, "let's go catch stars", he headed to the railway station before the call ended.

A day later, Shouyou found himself lying side by side Hoshiumi on the grass on top of a mountain in southern Nagano, 1,400 metres above the ground, gazing at impossibility. The night was crying stars, rivulets of lights streaming down the black smooth cheek, luminous enough to outshine the moon. It made him want to cry too, for stories of lightyears past whispered in twinkles, severed from their stars by insurmountable distance. 

"Can you see the same sky in Rio?" Hoshiumi asked as softly as he could. His hand felt scalding beside Shouyou's.

"No, I can't." Everything would be upside down. The North Star wouldn't be visible. Hoshiumi wouldn't be there.

They lay in silence, mourning along with the night. There were other stargazers, but they too seemed overwhelmed by the sorrow displayed openly before their eyes. Their murmurs dissolved into the rustling of leaves kept sobbing by the evening breeze.

When sorrow had soaked hearts heavy, when Shouyou thought this was how the universe ended, with the sky flooding everything with its shining tears, Hoshiumi's hand found his and didn't let go. 

"Hinata Shouyou, please wait for me," Hoshiumi said, voice so delicate Shouyou thought he was imagining it. His thumb brushed the back of Shouyou's hand. "I will catch up," he linked their fingers together, callouses hugging callouses. "And we will take on the world together," he squeezed Shouyou's heart.

Someone said waiting—letting someone, something scribble their names in permanent ink all over your time—was an enchantment. To be asked to wait, then, was to be enchanted. Spellbound, by the prospect of fullfillment. Cursed, by the possibility of infinity. 

But this was Hoshiumi, who punched gods as a warm-up. Who showed Shouyou how to be, once upon a spring. Who wrote Shouyou's name on his own time 7 years ago. Who now was asking Shouyou to do the same. This would never be a curse. 

Light was everywhere. Shouyou felt like he could move mountain and dam up oceans. He could climb eternal stairways and speed on the highways. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He chose both. 

"No. Please don't. Hoshiumi- _san_. This is cheating," he tried to shield his eyes from the light in vain. "Don't come for me when I'm emotional."

"This is the only way I know to catch you," Hoshiumi burst into laughter, loud enough to startle the entire mountain. Drowning in starlight, Shouyou heard an entire galaxy.

\---

"Let's go buy flowers, Hoshiumi- _san_ ," Shouyou says the moment Hoshiumi steps out of the shower. 

"What? Why?" Hoshiumi stops mid-stride. Water runs down his body and pools by his feet. 

"I want to give you flowers," Shouyou takes the microfibre towel from Hoshiumi and starts squeezing the water out of his hair. 

"Why? What's the occasion?" Hoshiumi stays still, his head leaning into Shouyou's hand. 

"No reasons. No occasions. There's no need, is there?

\---

Twenty minutes away from Hoshiumi's condo, they find a flower shop on a less crowded side street. The setting sun sprinkles the crates of hydrangeas by the entrance with pink and orange. 

"What flowers do you like, Hoshiumi- _san_?" Shouyou realises he doesn't know. After many months together, you still learn something new everyday.

"Might as well keep the surprise going," Hoshiumi helpfully facilitates Shouyou's learning process. A grin splits his face in half. Shouyou wants to lean in.

There’s no one but the florist inside the shop when Shouyou opens the door. The little old-fashioned brass bell chimes, and the florist, a woman in her 30s with a pair of big, round, black-rimmed glasses, looks up from the counter to greet him. 

“I'd like a big bouquet please,” Shouyou puts on his best smile.

“Is it for any special occasion?” The florist peers at him from behind her glasses.

“No. Just for—everyday life.”

The florist doesn’t bat an eyelash. She must have received stranger requests from overzealous men and women trying to use flowers in place of a language they can't speak. But she smiles at him, her face brightening up in recognition. 

“Is it for someone special then?” 

Shouyou flushes in confirmation.

"Do you have anything in mind? Any flowers? Colours?"

He thinks of wet grass and a weeping sky. A painting made of light. Brilliance that laughs, burning and blinding.

"Something bright."

\---

Half an hour later, Shouyou steps out of the flower shop with a heavy bouquet in his hand. White tuberoses and orange tulips, with baby's breaths galore.

Hoshiumi's eyes open wider than Shouyou has ever seen before. There's a shade of awe, a touch of reverence in the way his mouth parts slightly, the way he exhales sharply. 

You do learn something new everyday.

"They are beautiful. Thank you." Hoshiumi takes the bouquet in his arms. His fingers bless the orange petals with their maddening touch. His eyes lock on Shouyou's. Their olive matches the flowers wonderfully.

"No. Thank you, Hoshiumi- _san_ ," Shouyou says and means every word. "For everything." 

Hoshiumi's cheeks turn red and refract the last of the daylight like a sun-catcher. Shouyou thinks he would never mind being caught. Has already been caught. For years. 

Hoshiumi breaks away first. "Do you want to go somewhere else now that we're already out?" He starts walking back to the main street, hugging the bouquet to his chest.

Shouyou follows him. "Yes. A tattoo parlour." 

That stops Hoshiumi in his track. "What is wrong with you today?" He half shouts, amused and incredulous in equal measure. 

"I just want a tattoo like yours," Shouyou says, stepping closer. 

"Do you want to be me that much?" Hoshiumi jests, still catching light.

"I did, once," Shouyou decides to finish his answer from hours earlier. What's better time than now? What's better place than here? A Saturday night. A deserted side street in Tokyo. "But you showed me that I didn't have to. You showed me so much, Hoshiumi- _san_. All those years ago, when we first met. You showed me all the light." 

He puts his mouth to Hoshiumi's ears, "So, now, I just want you. Even when we are apart."

\---

Even when we are apart, we will still be together, because we are the same. We share the same sky, higher than anyone, higher than where humans dream, higher than where they expect us to fly. We are birds of a feather, even if our plumage differs in colour. We are exceptions who never stop, even when we plunge into the sea.

We are suns. We are stars. We are Icaruses.

**Author's Note:**

> for [victory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Victory_of_Samothrace)  
>   
> for [ecstasy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Ecstasy)  
>   
> someone says [waiting is enchantment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lover%27s_Discourse:_Fragments)  
>   
> the [sea of stars](https://www.go-nagano.net/en/topics_detail6/id=12334) (Hirugami onsen is there too)   
>   
> the Troye Sivan-laden [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6ag8Kwvlmll3b05mklb1tD?si=srt_-48zQ-6hODWOsavfvA) that fuelled this fic  
>   
> Thank you so much for reading.
> 
> I asked on Twitter who would get a tattoo, Hoshiumi or Hinata. The votes were [split evenly](https://twitter.com/alachat_/status/1299678088289288198?s=20), so here we are. 
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/alachat_) or [CC](https://curiouscat.me/alachat_).


End file.
